Page 131 of Run Wild Omega

She nods. I scoop her up off the couch, careful of her cast, and she buries her face in my neck. Her breath is hot against my skin, and her scent is everywhere, and my teeth are aching so bad I want to scream.

But I hold her. I carry her out into the snow, and Miles holds the door, and Dylan grabs her crutches. We load her into the back seat of the truck, and Dylan climbs in beside her, pulling her against his side.

I get behind the wheel. My hands are shaking.

The pack house is ten minutes away. Ten minutes of her scent filling the cab, ten minutes of my biology howling at me to pull over, ten minutes of white-knuckling the steering wheel and reciting the medic code of conduct in my head like a prayer.

I can do this. I can be the man she needs me to be. Not the reckless kid who almost ruined her life. Not the Alpha who can’t control his own instincts.

The man who holds her when she’s burning up and doesn’t take what isn’t offered.

Miles speaks up from the passenger seat. “I’m alerting Kyle to clear the station. No one enters the pack house until we say so.”

“Do it,” I say.

I pull onto the mountain road. The snow is falling harder now, fat flakes catching in the headlights. In the back seat, Tess whimpers against Dylan’s chest, and his hand strokes her hair, and his jaw is clenched so tight I can hear his teeth grinding.

Ten minutes.

I can survive ten minutes.

I have to.

Wyatt

The key sticks in the lock. My hands are shaking too much to line it up properly. Not from the cold. From the ten-minute drive that felt like ten hours, with Tess’s scent flooding the cab so thick I could barely see the road through the haze of my own biology.

I get the door open. The pack house is dark, the blinds already drawn from the last time Miles was here. The cedar and leather interior that usually grounds me now feels like a cage.

A necessary one.

“Inside,” I say. “Everyone.”

Dylan carries Tess through the doorway. She’s limp against his chest, her face buried in his neck, her fingers knotted in his jacket. Every breath she takes is a whimper, and each one lands in my gut like a punch.

I close the door. Lock it. Flip the deadbolt. Then I stand there for a second, my forehead pressed against the cold wood, and try to get myself under control.

My teeth are aching. My gums are sore, my canines sensitive, the primal part of my brain screaming that an Omega in heat is on the other side of this door and I’m the Alpha who should be with her.

Not guarding her. Not standing watch. Taking. Claiming. Rutting.

I press my palm flat against the door and breathe through my mouth.

“Get it together,” I mutter to myself. “You’re a medic. You’re a professional. You’re not an animal.”

My body disagrees.

I turn around. Miles is already moving through the apartment, closing the last of the blinds, checking windows. Dylan stands in the middle of the living room, holding Tess, looking at me like he’s waiting for orders.

Good. That’s what I need. A chain of command that keeps everyone focused and alive and not giving in to the biological imperative currently turning our brains to soup.

“Lockdown,” I say. “No visitors. No press. No one in or out until her heat breaks.”

Miles nods, pulling the final blind shut. The apartment goes dim, the gray morning light reduced to thin strips that seep through the edges of the curtains. The room contracts around us, intimate in a way that makes the hair on my arms stand up.

“Kyle’s already holding calls,” Miles says, pulling out his phone. “I’ll tell him to intercept anyone who comes near the station.”

“Do it. And tell him if Rourke shows up, he calls us before he engages.”